This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about one of Pilar's all-time favorite topics: Healthy Deviance. It's a favorite because it's the subject of the book she's writing, and also an idea at the core of the work she's been doing for the past 15 years or so — including this podcast!
So, what does it mean to be a healthy person in an unhealthy culture? What's required of us, and what's available to us, when we choose to reject the norms of a society that's making a lot of us sick and unhappy a lot of the time? And how the heck can you even hope to do that when there seems to be so much working against you?
These are questions that both of us are fascinated by, and that we each explore in our own work in different ways.
So here, we journey together into The Way of the Healthy Deviant, and we offer you some fun opportunities to experiment with Healthy Deviance in your own life.
Get full show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/healthy-deviance/
This week we're talking about fasting, the power of periodically foregoing food, and the significant health benefits that can proceed from doing it intelligently. Pilar shares what led her to embark on a seven day, medically-supervised water fast (yes, she consumed nothing but water for seven days, and lived to tell about it!). And Dallas shares what he knows about the increasingly popular intermittent fasting phenomenon. We talk about the potential pros and cons of fasting, and why it's not for everybody. We wind up with fasting experiments and suggestions you can try on your own, and offer up resources for further study. Finally, Pilar comes back to report on how her week-long fasting experiment went, and why, even though it wasn't all roses and rainbows, she's likely to do it again.
Get full show notes and resources at http://livingexperiment.com/fasting/
This week we're talking about the fine art of being nourished. By that, we mean not just being adequately fed or fueled, but being amply supplied with all the subtle nutritive and sensory properties that our bodies and minds require for optimal function and satisfaction.
We look at the epidemic of chronic undernourishment — driven both by under- and over-feeding — and we explore the strategies that most reliably lead to a happy nutritional balance. Finally, we suggest some experiments to help you fine-tune your self-nourishing strategies in ways that work for you.
Get full show notes at: http://livingexperiment.com/nourished/
This week on The Living Experiment, in what Dallas calls our "most terrifying episode" to date, we're talking about the qualities of masculinity and femininity. What does it mean to be masculine or feminine, and how do these traits both limit and empower us?
We wade into this delicate topic in an effort to explore the rich territory of gender-associated characteristics and the complex relationships between them. We share our own experiences with masculine/feminine dynamics and we offer you some trait-related experiments to help you explore them in your own life.
Dallas suggests:
Find someone you trust and who knows you well, and offer them the opportunity to comment constructively on how you express both your masculine and feminine traits.
Pilar suggests:
Focus on two accomplishments in your life, and reflect on both the masculine and feminine characteristics that helped you achieve both goals.
Get full show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/masculinefeminine/
Busy is the new black — and none of us are wearing it well. We're all over-scheduled, under-rested, rushing and running on empty most of the time. It's costing us in ways most of us don't even recognize. So this week on The Living Experiment, we talk about the epic burdens of busyness, and how we can get out from under them. We offer suggestions for reclaiming your margins and for managing your energy (rather hyper-controlling every last minute of your time). And we suggest some experiments to help you restore spaciousness and sanity in your life.
Dallas suggests:
Read How to be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson as a way of challenging your current patterns and assumptions around how you spend your time.
Pilar suggests:
Practice doing one thing and one thing only. While you do it, notice what it feels like to have your attention on this one thing, and to allow your mind to wander. See if you can get comfortable just being with yourself for this brief moment.
For full show notes visit http://livingexperiment.com/busy/
The start of a new year is a great time to re-evaluate and adjust the way you are spending your time and energy. So this week on The Living Experiment, we pull back the curtain on how we are doing that with one project in particular: the podcast itself.
As a way of modeling a reflective and strategic process you can use in your own life, we discuss our original goals and intentions in doing the show, where we feel like we're on course, and where we feel we're losing steam or burning valuable time and energy (mostly with the copious amounts of behind-the-scenes work).
We also invite input from you on our initial ideas for making pragmatic adjustments in ways that won't undermine the value of the podcast for us and our listeners.
Dallas suggests:
Think about a task or activity that isn't serving you, and swap it with something you've wanted to try or do more of. You may find that eliminating what isn't bringing value or satisfaction will free up the time, energy, or money you need to do sometime more rewarding.
Pilar suggests:
Pick one area of your life that feels overworked or an activity you’ve come to dread, and renegotiate the commitment. Give yourself permission to not do a thing you don't want to do, or do it in a way that is more enjoyable.
Bonus experiment:
Let us know what you think about our proposed changes to the podcast! We'd love to know if we talked about eliminating something that you find extremely valuable, if you think we're on the right track, or anything else you want to share.
Get complete show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/what-now/
For many of us, the New Year is a fresh start, an opportunity to get a new outlook on life. This week on The Living Experiment, we talk about the nature of the New Year experience, from the "New You!" media frenzy to the tradition of setting goals and resolutions, to the value of investigating the motivation behind those desires. We share our favorite approaches for pursuing change in our own lives, and explore expert theories about why your goals may be eluding you.
Dallas suggests:
Look at the changes you want to make for 2017, and articulate the motivation behind them.
Pilar suggests:
1) Make an Immunity Map following the steps in the Experience Life article, "How to Overcome Immunity to Change".
2) Create a Goal Flower using the "Cultivate Your Goals" section of Pilar's "Refine Your Life" workbook.
Get full show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/new-year/
It's hard to know what to believe. Online, in print, via TV and radio broadcast, the health media delivers a lot of mixed messages and downright confusing data. And as corporate interests increasingly shape and influence content streams, the more challenging it becomes to discern fact from profit-driven fiction. This week on The Living Experiment, we explore some of the dynamics that undermine accurate health-media coverage, and offer suggestions on how to navigate this often disorienting territory. We also suggest some experiments to help you become a better informed and more empowered media consumer.
Dallas suggests:
Read an article or two that peaks your interest from the list of trusted resources (see the Resources section, below) and choose something practical to change as a result. For example, replace margarine with coconut oil and butter.
Pilar suggests:
1) Read Experience Life magazine's article, "Decoding Health Media" to get a better understanding of the contemporary challenges media consumers face, and how you can overcome them.
2) Notice key words and phrases in health media, on product labels, and in advertising, noticing how they influence your assumptions and choices.
Get full show notes at http://livingexperiment.com/health-media/
Eating out offers many potential benefits – tasty food, fun with friends, and a break from cooking – but it can also lead to pitfalls for your well-being. This week on The Living Experiment we unpack the challenges of eating out, including the hidden world of food suppliers, cuisines built for profit rather than health, and misconceptions about gluten-free menus. We provide suggestions for taking command in making educated food choices – how to identify restaurants that value good food sourcing and think outside the box when ordering from a menu. To make eating out a life-giving experience, we offer experiments that encourage exploration and creativity in your dining adventures.
Dallas suggests:
The next time you go out to eat, try a new restaurant by asking for recommendations.
Pilar suggests:
Ask for food swaps that suit your preferences, and through practice, expand your comfort level in asking for what you want.
Get full show notes and resources at: http://livingexperiment.com/eating-out/
This week on The Living Experiment, we're talking about "mansplaining" — that dynamic where men sometimes explain things to women in condescending, clueless, or less-than-respectful ways.
Perhaps a man persists in explaining something that a woman already knows. Perhaps he talks over her attempts to express her own point of view. Or perhaps he holds forth in some way that generally does not honor his listener as an equal.
Mansplaining has become a popular term and a hot topic over the past few years, and because it's such an common source of stress and strife in our world, we also see it as an important and under-recognized health issue.
So in this episode, we talk about the origins of the word "mansplaining." We share our personal experiences with it and discuss how increasing our awareness of it can help men and women communicate in more constructive, mutually satisfying ways.
Finally, we serve up some experiments to help you notice how mansplaining might be showing up in your life — and what you can do about it.
Dallas suggests:
1) For men: Pay attention to how you speak to women, notice when you're mansplaining, and own up to it in the moment it happens.
2) For women on the receiving end of mansplaining, intervene with the man in a constructive way.
Pilar suggests:
1) Read Rebecca Solnit's thought-provoking essay, "Men Explain Things to Me", to get a sense of why this issue matters so much, and carries so much social, emotional and political charge.
2) Start noticing mansplaining on television, the radio, or wherever you overhear conversations.
Get full show notes and resources at http://livingexperiment.com/mansplaining/
We are big fans of coffee. We dig its flavor, its aroma, its health benefits, its feel-good buzz. We also know it's easy to overdo, particularly when we're rushed, stressed and depleted — which is precisely when all that caffeine is most apt to do us biochemical harm. In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we look at both the upsides and downsides of coffee, explaining how it affects both your body and brain from the moment you take a sip. We suggest ways to fine tune your coffee selection and habits, and offer our thoughts on the pros and cons of the burgeoning “butter coffee” trend. Finally, we present some experiments to help you make more conscious coffee decisions in your own life.
Dallas suggests:
Take a three-week break from coffee and all caffeine to assess your relationship with it and its effect on you.
Pilar suggests:
1) The next time you go into a coffee shop, order a "small," not a grandé, venti or super-jumbo-big-gulp.
2) Experiment with different ratios of cream to coffee.
Get full episode notes and links at http://livingexperiment.com/coffee/
Every season has its gifts, but we live in a culture that prefers to celebrate the bright, “go-go” energy of summer. Without the haven of a winter recovery cycle to replenish us, though, we get depleted, overstimulated, and overwhelmed. So in this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we talk about the important and under-appreciated aspects of the winter season. We explain how you can observe its traditions by strategically adjusting your mindset, sleep schedule, food, fitness activity, and more. Drawing on ancient wisdom and modern-day science, we suggest some experiments to help you make the most of winter in your own world.
Dallas suggests:
Progressively adjust your bedtime to get more winter sleep.
Pilar suggests:
1) Add more seasonal vegetables to your shopping list.
2) Swap night-time TV watching for some other low-key, constructive or creative activity, even if it’s just for a half hour and one night a week to start.
Get resources and other helpful links at livingexperiment.com/winter.
Shame is universal. It touches every age, gender, and ethnicity — from a child who wets the bed to a presidential candidate who is caught off guard in a debate. Shame operates at your core, often playing out in a debilitating combination of aggression, withdrawal, and perfectionism. But how can you address shame if you have difficulty acknowledging or talking about it? In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we discuss shame openly, flushing it out of hiding and into the light of day. We talk about where shame comes from, how men and women feel it differently, and how it impacts relationship dynamics. We also suggest steps to shift from shame toward self-acceptance and insight.
Dallas suggests: Identify and compassionately acknowledge your shame.
Pilar suggests: In the moments you feel shame, change the questions you ask.
Get resources and other helpful links at livingexperiment.com/shame.
Sitting on our butts — it's something most of us do for hours on end. We sit at our desks and in meetings. We sit while parked in front of screens at home. We sit while eating, drinking and socializing. We sit while driving cars and riding in planes and trains and — well, pretty much everywhere, most of the time.
Given how much of our lives we spend sitting, it’s worth knowing how it affects our bodily systems — not just our musculoskeletal health, but our metabolism, biochemistry, and more.
One expert quoted in The Washington Post asserts that after 30 minutes of sitting, your metabolism can slow by as much 90 percent, and that after two hours, the good cholesterol in your blood stream can drop 20 percent. Yikes!
So in this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we offer insights into the damage done by prolonged sitting, plus an explanation for why simply swapping sitting for standing isn’t an ideal solution, and some simple, doable ways to keep your body in motion at healthy intervals throughout the day.
Dallas suggests:
Establish a rule: If you’re going to watch TV or play video games, stand up while doing so.
Pilar suggests:
Take a look at the environments where you spend most of your time seated – both at work and at home – and evaluate how you might be able to adjust or redesign those spaces to encourage more frequent and regular movement.
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the "Share This" widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.
We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
We live in a culture that encourages us to consume far more than we create. That's a dynamic that directly undermines both our health and happiness. Learn why, and how you can achieve a more empowering balance.
Creativity — whether preparing a delicious meal or exchanging witty banter with an old friend — can bring deep satisfaction. Consumption — whether enjoying a fine wine or a riveting Game of Thrones episode — can also be a delightful experience.
But when creativity- and consumption-based pleasures get out of balance in our lives, our health and happiness start to suffer. Giving without receiving can be exhausting, while consuming without producing can feel aimless.
In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we explore the dynamic relationship between creativity and consumption, the historic events that have led to our modern-day imbalance, and some strategies for establishing a healthier equilibrium.
Dallas suggests:
Identify one or two places where you mindlessly over-consume, and pick a creative replacement activity instead.
Pilar suggests:
1) Reduce your in-car media consumption, and instead make a creative effort to drive with exceptional kindness and generosity.
2) Swap some TV time in favor of an activity that improves your personal environment or quality of life.
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the "Share This" widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.
We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
From a health perspective, what comes out of your body is every bit as important as what goes in. So we think it's high time we gave poo the respect it deserves.
Look, we know, it's an awkward topic. And that's why it's so rarely discussed among friends, lovers and family members, or even with health care professionals.
The problem is, when we don't talk about it, we don't learn about it. And when we don't learn about something as important as healthy digestion and elimination, we get into serious trouble.
That's why more than 60 million Americans suffer from constipation, and far many too many endure oppressive bowel related discomfort, toxicity and related inflammatory diseases.
So in this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we have a frank conversation about feces, defining what’s “normal” — in frequency, form, and yes, even aroma. We also offer some helpful counsel on identifying and resolving common poo problems, and more.
Even if you're a little grossed out, you're not going to want to miss this essential wisdom for improving your digestive process, your elimination experience, and your overall health.
Pilar suggests:
1) Incorporate a good-sized serving of fresh, non-starchy, leafy-green, or other fibrous vegetables with each meal of the day.
2) Notice and immediately respect your body's first-inkling signal that you need to poop.
Dallas suggests:
1) Drink at least one to two glasses of lukewarm water within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning;
2) Consider using a Squatty Potty.
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the "Share This" widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.
We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
Can you ever have “enough” — money, time, energy, love? Do you trust that you will have enough in the future? Do you believe you are enough, right now, just as you are?
Your answers to those questions can have a profound influence on your health and happiness.
In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we examine the opposing mentalities of scarcity and abundance. We explore how they affect our experiences in the present moment, and how they can impact our future.
Research suggests that worrying about "not enough" — or even focusing on on imaginary "not enough" scenarios — can reduce both our available IQ and our ability to respond to real-life challenges.
As Pilar says, “scarcity mentality tends to produce scarcity results.” That's why we're excited to offer up insights and experiments to help you evolve your mindset in more rewarding directions.
Dallas suggests: Explore and reframe your scarcity-driven feelings.
Pilar suggests: 1) Adopt a posture of plenty; and 2) ask, “What am I missing?”
Visit livingexperiment.com for links to Resources!
In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we dig into the fundamentals of Paleo and Primal eating approaches — their origins, similarities, and differences, plus practical steps for integrating them into the way you eat today.
We also examine the modern nutritional reductionism that led us to think about food as merely a sum of its parts (macronutrients, calories, and so on) rather than considering the value and integrity of whole foods in their natural state.
In addition to evaluating the differences between Paleo and Primal dietary strategies, we explore their key principles in the context of the larger ancestral nutrition movement — arguably the most significant dietary trend of the past two decades.
Contrasting the hunter-gatherer diets our ancestors consumed for most of human history (2.6 million years) with the more processed and grain-heavy diets we've embraced over the past 10,000 years, we offer up insights about why some foods seem to reliably produce health and vitality, while others consistently produce distress and disease.
Dallas encourages listeners to take on the Whole30 nutritional program:
Pilar suggests going a week without grains or sugars:
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (just click the "share this" tool on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot. We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
Wrapping up our successful first season, we offer a big picture view of what we see as the top 10 fundamentals of healthy, happy living, and how they fit into five key domains of wellbeing. We point out some of the essential connections between all these considerations, and we explain why each of them matters — especially those elements commonly overlooked or underemphasized by the conventional media. If you’re looking for a quick tour of what healthy living looks and feels like, you’ve come to the right place.
Episode Highlights:
Share the love!
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (just click the "share this" tool on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot. We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
Resources:
PLUS ...
This week on The Living Experiment, we consider the pros and cons of “Fitspo” — short for Fitness Inspiration — that stream of idealized-body imagery and imperatives that dominates a lot of social media feeds these days. We question whether this supposedly aspirational torrent of photos, messages and hashtags is doing health-seekers more harm than good. We challenge the notion that chasing an aesthetic ideal and comparing your body to others’ is likely to be a lasting, positive source of motivation. And we explore a demonstrated correlation between increased exposure to social media and lowered self-esteem. We wind up with some simple experiments you can run in your own life as a way of relating more consciously to the Fitspo memes and messages you’re likely to encounter, and as a way of reconsidering the impact they might be having your own health and happiness.
Episode Highlights:
Weekly Experiments:
Dallas suggests: Notice the Fitspo images you come across. How do they make you feel about yourself?
Pilar suggests: Think about ditching social media feeds that don’t match your real-life goals and values. Ask yourself how your own Fitspo posts you.
Share the love!
Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Share the love!
Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Resources:
PLUS:
On this episode of The Living Experiment, we’re talking about “Addiction” — what that phenomenon is all about, and how to address the sometimes-subtle dependencies that may show up in your own life. We address everything from physical and psycho-emotional attachments to food, exercise, emotional drama and social media to entrenched end-of-day drink rituals — even porn. We also help you reflect on the dynamics that can drive your own addictive tendencies, so you can start to shift them in ways that work for you.
Episode Highlights:
Weekly Experiments:
Dallas suggests: Why do you do what you do? Identify your addictions.
Pilar suggests: Challenge your daily alcohol ritual, and observe your attachments.
Share the love!
Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Resources
PLUS …
This week on The Living Experiment, we’re celebrating power of the pause — the importance of taking regular breaks, and the rewards of getting into agreement with our bodies’ natural energy-production and repair cycles. We reveal the biological necessity and scientific importance of ultradian rhythms —the regular fluctuations between output and recovery that allow our bodies to maintain optimal energy, focus and vitality. And we offer practical guidance on recognizing your body’s “need a break” signals, and building more brief, health-supporting pauses into your day. Whether you want to improve your energy, metabolism, hormonal balance and mood, minimize stress and inflammatory conditions, or just want to get more good stuff done during the course of the day, ultradian rhythm breaks are your best friend. Here’s how to make the most of them…
Episode Highlights:
Weekly Experiments:
Dallas suggests: Drink a glass of water each time you take a break.
Pilar suggests: Book two 15-minute interval breaks to check in on your body.
Share the love!
Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Resources:
Episode Highlights:
Weekly Experiments:
Dallas suggests: Tweak your hotel room for better sleep. Plus: Ask locals for on-the-ground advice.
Pilar suggests: Avoid an unhealthy, mediocre breakfast by packing your own basic supplies. Plus: Mimic your home evening routine while staying in your hotel.
Share the love!
Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Resources:
On today’s episode of The Living Experiment, we’re talking about seasons: the natural fluctuations your body goes through during the cycles of winter, spring, summer, and fall, and the nutrition, fitness and life-rhythm strategies you can use to stay healthier through all of them. Dallas shares his simple but powerful, science-based model for eating, moving and sleeping in accordance with the seasons.I offer up some insights about the value of observing nature’s ebb-and-flow patterns—rather than being driven by the non-stop madness of modern-day mass culture. Together we explore the ancient wisdom our human bodies still carry about patterns of dark and light, warm and cold, exertion and recovery. And of course, we wrap up with some seasonally appropriate experiments you can run in your own life.
Episode Highlights:
Weekly Experiments
Dallas suggests: Take a look at how well your current food/activity/sleep programs are coordinated. Seek to correct any observed imbalances.
Pilar suggests: Look at the season that's coming into view and consider: What is one single, relatively simple thing I could do to accommodate this shift of season?
Share the Love!
Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Resources
In this episode of The Living Experiment, we talk about mornings - the challenges they present for many, and some smart strategies for redesigning them in ways that work better for you. Pilar shares the central elements of her flexible, minimalist morning practice, and Dallas shares his mindful coffee-making approach. We explain the underappreciated power of your first waking moments, and offer a fleet of suggestions for creating healthier, more rewarding mornings - without taking on a bunch of new, time-consuming commitments. Finally, we serve up some practical experiments to help you consciously reclaim your mornings so you can more successfully start each day on your own terms.
Episode Highlights
Weekly Experiments
Dallas suggests: Take a minute in the morning to mindfully make your bed.
Pilar suggests: Try adopting a 1- to 3-minute practice every day for a week.
Share the Love!
Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.
Resources